Monterey and ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009 Review June 30, 2009

I’ve just recently returned from a really enjoyable trip to the USA to attend an Oracle ACE Director briefing at Redwood Shores and the ODTUG Kaleidoscope Conference in Monterey, CA.

During the week, I had the opportunity to finally meet some of the other Oracle ACE Directors such as Tim Hall, Mark Rittman, Lucus Jellema, Lonneke Dikmans, Mike van Alst, Husnu Sensoy, Debra Lilley and Harshad Oak to name but a few. I also had a great time hanging out with fellow Aussies Chris Muir and Marcel Kratochvil, sharing many a beer and bottle of red wine. A highlight was sitting outside one balmy evening, drinking one of Marcel’s expensive reds with Chris and Tim Hall, whist discussing the bizzare topic of body hair !! During the week, it was announced Chris had been awarded the Oracle ACE Director of the Year, a much deserved honour and Marcel got the opportunity to spread his dislike of having Foreign Keys in the database to anyone who would (and would not) listen.

I also got to meet the infamous Stanley as well. Life can be strange at times …

How many Oracle ACE Directors do you recognise (and can you spot me) ;)

The ODTUG Kaleidoscope Conference was excellent, a really well run event, held in the lovely surroundings of the Hyatt Hotel complex in beautiful Monterey, California. As usual with these types of events, the quality of the presentations varied considerably. Some of the highlights included an excellent presentation by Bryn Llewellyn on “Doing SQL from PL/SQL: Best and Worst Practices” and some really interesting presentations by Toons Koppelaars on the importance of “Fat Databases: A layered Approach” and on “Semantic Query Optimization”. Lowlights included a truly awful, error riddled presentation by Burleson on so-called Oracle 11g SQL Tuning Secrets. I was warned beforehand, I should have known better and listened …

Also had time to explore Monterey and check out some of its attractions. It’s a really scenic part of the world and it was great to escape the Canberra winter for a couple of weeks. The Monterey Bay Aquarium is a must visit, one of the most impressive I’ve ever visited and I’ve seen quite a few around the world. The Kelp Forest display with its school of Sardines was just superb as were the jelly fish tanks.

Fisherman’s Wharf was worth checking out with it’s old wooden buildings as was Cannery Row, made famous by John Steinbeck. However, probably the highlight for me was the Whale watching cruise where I along with Chris, Marcel and Debra Lilley were all lucky enough to see two Humpback Whales. What an incredible experience, although I almost (but not quite) nearly saw my breakfast again in the choppy conditions. The smell of the Humpback whale’s plume (something akin to a mixture of rotting broccoli and rotting fish) had me gagging again but I managed to just hang on. If you ever get the chance, do it, but pick a mild calm day if possible.

Finally, I also had the very great pleasure in meeting members of the hard working OTN team responsible for administrating the Oracle ACE program (Justin Kestelyn : follow link for photos, Todd Trichler, Vikki Lira and Lillian Buziak). Thanks guys for all your wonderful work and support in organising such a wonderful event for all the Oracle ACEes.